It is the home
of photographer Nathan Marten, a convicted child molester who is stalking
Rita's young daughter, Astor.

Astor refers
to him as "The Cheerios Man", because when he first approached
her in a supermarket, he said he was trying
to find the Cheerios section.

Marten later
shows up a beach where Rita and her
children are having an outing, and uses a long lens to shoots photos of
young Astor from a distance. Dexter spots him lurking there, and later
confronts him at a boardwalk restaurant,
warning him to stay away.

We
see the house twice.

The first time,
right after the café confrontation, Dexter visits the house after dark,
and watches Marten through a window, but decides that he can't kill him,
because he doesn't fit his code (since Marten has never actually murdered
someone).

The second time,
in the same episode, Dexter finds himself drawn back to the house, despite
the fact that Marten doesn't meet his code.

Entering the
house, Dexter finds Marten sitting at his computer, looking at photos he
has shot of Astor. Dexter strangles him, modifying his code to include
those who "step uninvited into my world" - declaring "Nobody
hurts my children."

On his way out,
Dexter remembers that Rita has asked him to pick up some milk, and takes
a carton of milk from Marten's refrigerator.

Q.
What is it actually in real life?

A. A residential
home, but not in Miami.

Q.
Where can I find it in real life?

A. They shot
the scene at 7001 W. 83rd Street,
in the Westchester/Playa Del Rey section of Los Angeles.

It's on the
northwest corner of Georgetown Ave and 83rd St, just south of Loyola-Marymount
University (where they filmed a campus scene
between Debra & Dexter).

The area is
about a mile north of LAX, and about two miles southeast of Marina del
Rey, where the show has filmed a number of scenes, including Dexter & Rita's
wedding, the boating
store and the arrest of Mario.

I shot
the photos below in 2009

[
Warning: This is a private home. Do not trespass
on their property, knock on their door,
or do anything else that might disturb the residents. ]

A. When I began
my search, I was looking for a few key features: the large palm tree
at the corner, the distinct chimney (which runs through second-floor roof),
the power pole visible behind the house, and the fact that it was on the
left side of a street corner.

I thought at
first that the house might be in the old "Dexter
Neighborhood", where they filmed Rita's house and several others
in earlier seasons. When a search of that area failed, I moved on
to nearby Long Beach neighborhoods, but that was also a waste of time.
Knowing they had also filmed near the studio in Hollywood, I checked there
as well, to no avail.

But I knew
that the show has always had a tendency to "cluster shoot" (that
is, to shoot more than one scene in the same general vicinity - probably
as a cost-cutting method). And for this same episode, they were out shooting
the college campus scene of Dexter talking to Debra about his baby. So
when I discovered that they had filmed that college scene at Loyola University
(thanks to a tip from a departed artist), I wasn't surprised to learn
that the house was just south of that campus. So I searched that area.
There were no Google StreetView photos of those neighborhoods, but Bing
aerial photos proved sufficient to find it. (Thanks, D.A.)